President Barack Obama Thursday called for $10.7 billion to be dedicated to nationwide wireless public safety network, and $5 billion for a one-time upgrade to 4G wireless in rural America. Obama dedicated most of Thursday to wireless, flying to Marquette, Mich., where he viewed a WiMAX network installed at Northern Michigan University and spoke at the school to an enthusiastic audience standing in front of a sign that read “Winning the Future."

The FCC Media Bureau denied an experimental license application from low-power TV (LPTV) operator WatchTV that sought to test an OFDM-based broadcast transmission system popular overseas with an in-band broadband service. The applicants had complained the request wasn’t getting the attention it deserved (CD Jan 14 p4). But the request appeared to seek authority to introduce a new service that doesn’t comply with FCC rules and would appear to be more akin to a developmental license rather than an experimental license, bureau Chief Bill Lake wrote Watch TV Chairman Greg Hermann, who’s also president of the LPTV group Spectrum Evolution. Developmental licenses should be accompanied by petition for rulemaking, Lake wrote. “Where a new service would employ technology inconsistent with the existing ATSC standard, any rulemaking most likely would be accompanied by industry standards development."

House Republicans aren’t on a “quest” to take back broadband stimulus money already obligated, said Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. He has a draft bill (CD Feb 10 p7) to speed the return of unused and misused money provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. After a hearing on the draft Thursday, Walden told reporters his goal is to set up “safeguards” to ensure that problems with broadband stimulus programs are found and to hasten the return of money to the U.S. Treasury.

Sprint Nextel added almost 1.2 million subscribers Q4, the first quarter it has added postpaid subscribers in more than three years. The company narrowed its loss to $929 million from $980 million a year earlier. Sprint will announce its long-term 4G strategy by midyear and may switch from WiMAX to LTE, CEO Dan Hesse indicated in a conference call Thursday.

IPhone fever appeared fairly low-grade at one of the two largest Verizon Wireless stores in Manhattan early Thursday when doors opened on 34th Street for in-store sales of Apple’s 3G iPhone 4. Verizon had prepared for a much larger crowd, but most of the roughly 18 stanchions perched outside the store for crowd control remained stacked against a post in our 90 minutes at the store. When we arrived about 6:30 a.m., prior to the scheduled opening at 7 a.m., 14 consumers, many sipping hot coffee, stood in line braving 26-degree temperatures. The line was far shorter than we, and apparently Verizon, had anticipated.

FCC action on a longstanding proposal to create Ku-band rules for the aeronautical mobile satellite service is in the works at the International Bureau, said commission officials and industry executives. The rules -- expected to resemble rules for vehicle-mounted earth stations and earth station on vessel in the same band -- would aid the inclusion of satellite broadband devices when airplanes are manufactured, said an industry executive. The FCC put out a rulemaking notice to set rules for the Ku-band service in 2005 but it has received sparse attention from industry, commission records show.

There are “surprising new developments” in the latest global fiber deployment rankings, the Fiber-to-the-Home Council said at its Milan conference Thursday. Turkey made the list for the first time, and the United Arab Emirates popped up fourth in FTTH market penetration, ahead of all European and Americas economies, the council said. Russia is about to overtake the U.S. in fiber connection penetration, it said, but European deployment remains slow and patchy. European Commission Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes blamed regulators, saying their uneven enforcement of next-generation access rules is hampering investment.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- An FTC commissioner made explicit the iron fist of federal legislation beneath the velvet glove of industry self-regulation that the commission left open in a recent privacy report supporting a Do Not Track system for online information. “We will go to Congress to take up this issue” if industry “doesn’t move quickly and sufficiently,” Commissioner Julie Brill said late Wednesday at a Berkeley Center for Law and Technology conference. The December preliminary report left open whether Do Not Track should be required by law.

The FCC is launching a “broadband acceleration initiative,” Chairman Julius Genachowski said Wednesday. An internal task force made up of FCC staff is to develop “concrete recommendations” on which the FCC will seek comments in a notice of inquiry to be released in April, he said. Genachowski said the staff task force is to build on work done so far by the commission’s newly reconstituted Technology Advisory Council, headed by Tom Wheeler, former CTIA and NCTA president.

States aren’t expected to be squeezed out of the Universal Service Fund system anytime soon and they'll actively engage in the FCC’s USF and Intercarrier Compensation proceeding, Tony Clark, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utilities Commission, said in an interview. The FCC voted Tuesday to issue a broadly worded rulemaking notice to reshape the USF and ICC system (CD Feb 9 p1). The notice has an entire section on the role of states, an FCC official told us.